


left for yesterday (records that i've played)

by WDW



Series: village hidden in the plot bunnies [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Characters Reading Fanfiction, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Time Travel, feelings don't like kakashi either, kakashi doesn't like feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-08 05:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3197141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WDW/pseuds/WDW
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We can do this, Team Minato!" Obito says, eyes glinting. "We'll save the village through the power of randomly appearing future books and gay romance novels!" </p><p>[Team Minato reads Naruto fanfiction, and saves the world]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because there are way too many 'Naruto and co. watch/read the future' and why not upend the status quo? Things are a lot funner when you have to figure out what's the legitimate information and what's just badly written gay porn.
> 
> (I probably won't be referencing any real fanfiction in here, but if I do, it will be sufficiently vague and I'll include the title and author in the notes.)

For once, Obito is early. He's sitting nervously on the verdant training ground, a large book bag next to him, but perks up as Rin approaches. He shows most of his teeth in a wild grin.

"Rin!" He shouts in greeting, and with a look of relief, says, "I guess I'm lucky you got here first, huh? I was afraid I would have to wait here alone with  _Kakashi_."

She laughs at that. Maybe it was a good thing that Obito was usually so late to team meetings. Without her or Sensei to mediate their constant fighting, Kakashi and Obito would have landed each other in the hospital a hundred times over. Even with Sensei's calm admonishments and her own constant attempts to intervene, the two were constantly at each other's throats.

Rin plops herself right next to him, the soft grass cushioning her landing. "Then I would have had to haul you two idiots to the hospital myself," she teases.

Sensei was gone for the week. His orders had came in just the day before, so he hadn't had the chance to reschedule their training. "I'm afraid that the three of you will be on your own," he had said apologetically, waving goodbye at the gate. Earlier, he had told her privately to stop the boys from getting themselves into too much trouble. "But don't break any bones," he had added, only half-jokingly.

Obito flushes red. "Like he could land a hit on me," he scoffs, obviously forgetting about the last few times he and Kakashi had literally brawled on the field. "You two are supposed to be fighting enemies, not each other," she had said reproachfully the last time it had happened, putting ice to the site of what had been an especially vicious punch, even as Obito wiped at his eyes and complained about dust in the air.

She giggles, but plays along. "So, why are you here so early today, Obito-kun?" It was an odd day for him to turn over a new leaf, especially since the only witnesses to the miraculous event would be herself and Kakashi, the latter of which would probably make light of it.

"I need to tell you something important," he says, expression resolute, before adding, almost reluctantly, "...And Kakashi too, I guess. Except he's  _late_ , so I guess I don't have to wait for him then -"

"I'm not late," she hears, and then sees Kakashi jump down from his tree, landing perfectly. He fixates Obito with his perpetually bored eyes. "I've been here the whole time."

" _You_  -" Obito splutters, mouth hanging open unattractively. He scrambles away from the standing Kakashi. "Dammit, why didn't you show yourself then?"

"Then I would have to talk to you," Kakashi says simply, the statement matter-of-fact. Obito's expression turns indignant, and it is clear that he is about to start shouting when Rin puts a hand on his arm and shakes her head slightly.  _It's not worth it_ , she thinks, and Obito seems to have caught her meaning because all he does is mutter under his breathe about 'stuck up bastards'. Disaster averted, at least for the moment.

"Obito, what do you need to tell us?" She asks patiently. "Should Sensei be here for this?"

He shakes his head. "No, I - I've already tried that. It didn't work. I'm not sure why, but..." He swallows nervously. "I've tried to tell other people what I'm gonna tell you guys right now, but for some reason, they don't remember! I tell them, they look concerned for five seconds, and then they ask me what I'm there for - as if I didn't just tell them why!"

Rin exchanges glances with Kakashi. "Who did you tell, Obito?" She asks.

"Sensei," he says, flatly. "The Sandaime. Even random office chuunin in the Hokage Tower, cuz I got frustrated. Other than them, I don't really have anyone that I would  _want_  to tell. So I thought, and then it was obvious that I have to tell  _you_ , and... well, Kakashi's still my teammate, so."

"Just say it then, Obito," Kakashi drawls. "Stop being dramatic."

" _Dammit_ , okay  _fine_." Obito visibly tries to muster up his courage, straightening up and puffing out a little. "I - I've been finding these - these  _books_ , and they're all written about the future."

"Obito?" Rin says carefully, tone carefully nonjudgemental. Kakashi has a hand to his face, already shaking his head.

"It's true! I didn't believe it at first either. I kept wondering why there were these random books lying around, and it was like nobody else could see them, and it turns out that nobody else  _could_ see them. So I started picking them up, and I read them, and -" He cuts off. "They were about shinobi, and Konoha, and jutsu, and -"

"Civilian fiction," Kakashi says, deadpan.

"I thought so too, at first, okay? But there were too many coincidences." Obito looked frantic now, and even though Rin didn't quite believe him, she knew that it meant a lot to Obito that they did. "There are four Hokages up there in the books, and the Academy's  _different_ , and in them, the War is  _over_." He says all this in one breath. "The ones I've read - they're all about this Academy student named Naruto who wants to be shinobi, and he ends up being assigned to a team, and his jounin sensei is  _Hatake Kakashi_. He has this weird white colored chakra," he adds, "but I'm not sure if that's right-"

Kakashi flinches, and that's an answer by itself. Rin says, "Show us the books, Obito."

Practically glowing with excitement, Obito more or less hurls a thick purple book at Kakashi, who catches it with typical shinobi reflexes. "Page 58," Obito says, face bright with hope. "It's the second paragraph down."

Rin leans over Kakashi's shoulder. "'I am Hatake Kakashi,'" she reads out loud, "'I have no intentions of telling you my likes and dislikes. As for my dream... I have few hobbies.'" She looks up, more than a little amused. "It does sound like you, Kakashi," she says.

Kakashi isn't listening. He looks down at the page with intense concentration, and then flips through the pages with incredible speed. "The character has silver hair," he says finally, flatly. "Wears a mask that covers most of his face, a hiti-ate that covers one of his eyes."

"Exactly! I thought maybe the guy who wrote it just picked a name out of a hat, or something. But the Kakashi in these books look like you, too." Obito adds, seeing an opportunity. "Plus, the team that Naruto's on - there's a Uchiha on it, and he  _acts_  like a Uchiha. There's a girl - Haruno -"

" _Kizashi_?" Rin mutters, surprised. He was the only Haruno she knew, and she was aware that Obito had no idea who he was, despite being one of their classmates in the Academy.

Obito shrugs. "...I don't know who that is, but maybe she's his future kid or something. I didn't get that far into it. I've been seeing the books for a while, but I didn't actually try reading them until a few days ago."

"Are all of these... a part of a  _series_?" Kakashi demands, eying the dozen or so books in Obito's bag.

The Uchiha shakes his head. "I thought so, but some of them are a lot shorter than the others and - well, they don't really connect. Like, one book would start with the teams being chosen, and then the next would still be at the Academy..." He trails off, and it is clear that he has suddenly realized something of great importance. "Wait, so... you believe me, right? And... you  _remember_  this?" His voice is desperate, and it is clear to Rin that he  _wants_  them to believe him, so he wouldn't be alone in his knowledge of this strange event.

But did she? The idea of books about the future was insane, in all honesty. The idea that some technique had rendered them not only invisible to some of the strongest existing shinobi, but rendered them completely impossible to be discussed, both in verbal and written forms. And yet...

"Obito, I don't know if I'm completely sure about this, but... right now, there's a lot of evidence that says that you're telling the truth," Rin says finally, because really, what else could she say? "Do anyone else we know show up, other than Kakashi? You, or me, or Sensei?"

Obito furrows his brows in thought. "Not me," he says, "and I don't remember reading anything about you or Sensei. The Sandaime's in there too - he's still Hokage, even though there was a Yondaime at some point. He died, I think. There was a..." His expression turns dark. He does not like what he is going to say, and yet he says it anyways, forcing it out in one go. "There was a Kyuubi attack."

"A  _Kyuubi_  attack?" Rin stammers. But that was impossible - that would mean -

"The Naruto kid," Obito says, voice cracking slightly, and Rin knows that he's half submerged already in his own memories of the distant past. "He's an Uzumaki. With blonde hair and blue eyes, and whisker marks on his cheeks. And... he's an orphan."

( _an orphan_ , the words reverberate within her, and it is Obito and Kakashi who come to mind, and it hurts knowing what they have gone through with no one on their side.)

"No," says Rin, and suddenly, the future depicted in those books seemed a lot worse than grown-up Kakashi messing with a bunch of genin for kicks and giggles. "You think... Sensei and his girlfriend...?" Obito nods slightly, and she sees that Kakashi's fist hangs bloodless at his side. Rin knows his teeth are gritted behind his mask, because for someone who covered up half of their face on a daily basis, it was surprisingly easy to know what Kakashi was thinking.

"I won't let it happen," Kakashi says, and within it is a promise, a statement, a plea, all wrapped up into one.

" _We,_ " Obito cuts in, voice fierce. "All three of us. We know about these books, and we're the only people who remember them. That just means we have to all work together, right? Sensei's  _our_  Sensei - and Kushina-nii is  _our_  Kushina-nii, even if she messes with us all the time. Not just yours, Bakashi!"

 _Soon_ , thinks Rin, heart sinking. Kakashi will spout another arrogant retort, and Obito will return the insult, and the faint camaraderie that had built up within her team - for the first time she could remember - would be destroyed, again.

It is therefore a complete surprise to her when all Kakashi does is nod, albeit with obvious reluctance. "You found these, so that means that you're somewhat important," he reasons. "Anyways, you'll probably fail miserably on your own like usual. You'll need help."

"You -" Obito shakes his head. "You know what? I can deal with that. You know, you're not that bad of a guy after all, Kakashi." He attempts a smile that looks more like a cringe. Still, Rin thinks, it's a step in the right direction.

Kakashi sidesteps the compliment, purposely pretending as if he didn't hear. "We're going to need a plan," he says instead, mind already calculating possibilities. There is a reason that he is next in line for promotion, Rin thinks. "We need to get more information about this... the future. That means we'll have to read through these, and create a timeline of events. We can't let ourselves get blindsided when... when  _they're_  at stake."

"I have twelve books with me," Obito offers. "I see them all over the place, so there's more, but... for now, that means four for each of us. But... some of them... I don't think they'll be useful."

"We can't count anything out," Rin argues. "Maybe there's something useful in those." Surely any tidbit they can get about the future will be important, right?

"There's  _nothing_ useful in them!" Obito squawks, covering his face, looking just like the time when Sensei had relegated them to  _his_  sensei for a week, and Obito had agreed to helping with 'research' and came back red and guilty.  _Oh_ , Rin thinks, and it takes all she can not to burst out giggling.

"Maybe for you," Kakashi drawls, a trace of the usual arrogance finally present. " _Real_ shinobi have to look underneath the underneath."

" _Fine_ , then  _you_  read them!" The Uchiha shouts, and shoves a handful of books into his arms. "Just as long as I don't have to think about -" He shakes his head. She decides not to ask.

"I can get the longer ones," Rin offers. "I read fast." Faster than Obito, at least, who she knows had learned the very basics of the skill a month after the Academy had started and had never felt the need to advance in such (not that he really had the need to, not beyond the level of Academy textbooks). She accepts the books, one of which is even thicker than the medical texts that she is used to. She glances down and -  _What kind of pen name was 'SakuraFan647'?_ Of all possible names an emissary of the future would choose to go by...

"Obito," Kakashi says slowly, flatly. His voice seems to promise future debilitating injury, and Rin remembers hearing the same tone the time Obito had spilled juice all over a murderous Kakashi, way back in the one year the three of them had been at the Academy together. He holds up one of his books, so thin that it looked like a pamphlet.

'100 NaruSasu Kisses,' it reads. Below it is a cartoonish representation of a blonde man swooping a black haired man in for a deep, passionate kiss. Rin puts a hand over her mouth, half to muffle her damning laughter and half to cover a sudden blush (in her defense, she  _did_ break away from the fujoshi crowd the year she had graduated).

"Look underneath the underneath, Bakashi!" Obito shouts gleefully. "That's what you said, right?"

"Don't call me that," Kakashi snaps, but looks down at the book with a calculating look in his eye.

* * *

Kakashi had woken to find a hardbound novel on his battered night stand, and there is a brief moment of panic because it had not been there when he had retired, mind whirling around the inexplicable discovery that Obito, of all people, had made. No one could have made it into his room without him knowing, and it is a knowledge not based on arrogance. Sensei had helped him put up wards, complicated looking seals around every entrance, designed to release a distinct burst of chakra when triggered. That, and Kakashi himself was not a particularly sound sleeper - he couldn't remember the last time he dreamed (though that, he was grateful for).

Fifteen different possibilities arrange themselves in his mind before he remembers Obito's tale of prophetic books that only he can see. He scans his surroundings for chakra signatures and cracks open the book cautiously when he finds none. The names he sees are familiar. Naruto, Sensei's and Kushina's future son. Sasuke, the Uchiha. Sakura, the (he winces) fangirl. And... himself. The lazy, perverted jonin sensei Hatake Kakashi, who reads porn in broad daylight and is late for every. Damn. Thing.

The very knowledge makes him furious, that in the span of what couldn't have been more than a few decades, he would forget every lesson he had forced himself to learn after  _his_  death. Ever since the day he had seen his - the blood pooling on the wooden floor of their home, the glazed over eyes, the slack hand -

He cut off his ruminations violently. No,  _he_  wouldn't make the mistakes the future Hatake Kakashi would make.

Kakashi had spent most of the night examining what Obito had given him. Four books, each ranging from twenty to two hundred pages long, each with a boldly lettered title and a brief summary, and imprinted with a string of numbers that he concluded could only be the date of publishing. The years were obviously different from the calendar every village used, which started from the end of the Era of Warring Clans. Even if these books were written in the future, Kakashi found it difficult to believe that he and his future students would be worth remembering almost two millennia in said future.

No, the dates were a mystery that he had yet to solve. Instead, he had read through his novels, and realized something that Obito obviously had not.

These books... were fictional retellings of actual events. And while that had explained the improbability of some future events (which included page 29 of '100 NaruSasu Kisses,' which had included events on the Hokage Mountain that Kakashi  _knew_  ANBU would not take kindly too) it also meant that not everything in the book could be trusted. Granted, there were a few events that remained constant, and those he knew were part of the real future.

The Academy, and Iruka-sensei (Kakashi vaguely remembered a kid named 'Iruka' that he had passed on the street.) Mizuki, and the Kyuubi. Team 7's choosing. His older self, and the bell test that had ended in a way that tempted Kakashi to Katon the damn thing (because teamwork? It was almost as if he completely forgot about  _that man._ )

The others, however, were suspect. Naruto and Sasuke's romantic relationship, which had not shown up in anywhere other than the singular novel (and for which he was grateful for, because the two interacted in a way that was far too familiar to a certain other pair for his liking.) The one where Naruto had turned out to  _be_  the Kyuubi, in human form. And finally, the one that he  _knew_  was pure fantasy, which included the hyperactive blonde Naruko as the protagonist and Sasuko and Sakumo as teammates (as well as lazy, mask-wearing kunoichi  _Kakashi_ ).

The absence of Sensei and his teammates within the stories were suspect as well. Kakashi tried to convince himself that since the story was focused on Naruto, it would make sense for people not as closely related to the kid to not appear - that, and Sensei was most likely deceased. But still, the knowledge nagged at him (and why did it? Obito was a useless idiot, and Rin was nothing more than a teammate. He  _knew_  they were.)

It takes him a moment to come to the realization that he had slept past sunrise, when he usually woke. He curses; the team had decided to meet at Rin's home, because it was the only place between the three of them that could fit all of them. Obito had rambled about a dirty room, but Kakashi still remembered the time Sensei had sat him down and explained about Obito's home life - or lack of it - in an attempt to get him to treat the idiot with more patience (it had worked, for the two minutes before Obito opened his mouth.)

Kakashi reaches Rin's home minutes after the agreed upon time, and is greeted by Rin's mother - a kindly career genin who thought that that he and Obito were good targets for mothering. Irritating, but he bore it with dignity. She ushers him in to where Rin and Obito are sitting on the floor, a thick notebook between them.

Obito springs up, finger pointed. "You're  _late_ , Kakashi!" He shouts, and it is obvious that he is relishing every word of it.

He eyes him boredly, not giving him the satisfaction. "Here, catch." Kakashi tosses his find at him, disgust rising as Obito catches it - barely - and struggles it for a few moments before getting a firm grasp. "Found it an hour ago. Looks like we're all involved in this now."

"You  _found_  one?" Obito yelps. "No  _way."_ It is clear to Kakashi that the idiot had been hoping for some sort of exclusivity in his find, and so his only response is a scoff.

"Let's add it to the pile," Rin says, pointing to the corner of the room. "Obito didn't get here too long ago, so we didn't get a lot done. I was thinking that we should write down everything we found out, so we can reference it in the future."

"First things first, then," Kakashi says. "Do both of you know that these are fictional? They are based on real, future events, but the authors took certain... liberties."

Rin nodded, while Obito looked vaguely stunned.  _Unsurprising_ , Kakashi thought acerbically. Obito had scored among the lowest in their year, while Kakashi and Rin had scored around the highest - for him,  _the_  highest. But Obito's look of surprise turned into triumph. "Hah," he shouts, "I  _knew_  Kakashi couldn't have gotten the Sharingan!"

"The  _Sharingan_?" He demands. The Uchiha doujutsu, passed down only to direct members of the clan. "It said that I have the Sharingan?" Almost automatically, he considers - and discards - the idea of himself being an Uchiha bastard.  _He_  had certainly been his father, and he knew his mother was as far away from the Uchiha Clan in status as humanely possible, from what little  _he_  had told him.

"Yeah, it was during the Wave Mission. You were fighting this guy named Zabuza, and you just -" Obito mimes pulling at his hiti-ate. "You only had one of them, though. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty badass, even though it wasn't real."

"No," Rin says, thinking. "Kakashi has the Sharingan in what I read, as well. He talked about it after the bell test. He said," she swallows, "he said that it was a gift from his best friend, whose name was on the Memorial Stone. He wanted to let Sasuke know after the -" She shuts her mouth suddenly. "It's not important right now."

"Wait, so Kakashi  _does_  get the Sharingan?" Obito exclaims. "What the hell, that's so unfair! It doesn't make sense, either. The Uchiha... the Sharingan is like our  _life_. It's the one thing we protect above all else, and I don't know  _anyone_  who let someone else get their eyes. When they die... they always destroy their eyes. That's like, Uchiha Law Number One!" His expression is indignant now, eyes narrowed angrily. "And 'best friend'? Do you even have friends, Kakashi?"

Kakashi flinches involuntarily. " _Obito_ ," Rin snaps, looking dangerous. "That was fucked up."

Obito stops, evidently cowered by the reappearance of Foul Mouthed Rin.

"I have no friends within the Uchiha," Kakashi admits. "Probably something that happens in the future."

The statement satisfies Obito enough that he sits back down. It is clear to Kakashi why he had felt so strongly about the Sharingan - Obito, unlike most of his Clan, had shown no signs of ever being able to activate the clan's doujutsu. The idea that someone outside of the clan - Kakashi, even - could have what he desperately wanted... that, at least, Kakashi could understand.

"There's something else that's going to happen in the future," Rin says suddenly, and it seems that this is the reason she had looked so uncomfortable. "I don't know when it's going to happen, but it won't happen for at least a decade. Obito, I didn't want to believe it, but it explains a lot, and three out of my four books all made references to it and -"

"What is it?" Obito asks urgently. "Does something happen to you?"

"No," she says. "It's - the Uchiha Clan. It's gone."

" _Gone_?" He yelps. "What - Why -"

"There was a - a massacre," Rin says, expression somber. "One of the clan prodigies killed everyone else in the Clan. His name is... Uchiha Itachi, and he's the older brother of Sasuke. It's why Sasuke is such a - well,  _angry_. He wants to go after his brother and kill him."

"A massacre," Obito repeats blankly. "What -  _Everyone_? Even the kids? The - the old grannies? There are - There's Kenshin-san and Mayuri-san, they sell dango on weekdays, they never activated their Sharingan, they're not even shinobi -"

"It didn't say anything about them," Rin says. "All I know is... the Uchiha Clan Compound is empty. Nobody's left."

Obito doesn't say anything, eyes closed tightly. "So... that's why I don't show up, huh?" He says finally, faintly. "I went through everything word by word to see if I was the Fourth Hokage and maybe  _that_ ' _s_ why I wasn't mentioned, but... Dammit. I can't believe it."

The idiot is about three words from bursting into disgusting, snotty tears. Kakashi intervenes. "Stop being an idiot," he barks, and his teammates snap to attention almost instinctively at his tone. "It didn't happen yet, did it? We still have more than a decade to make sure it doesn't happen. So stop crying."

"I'm not  _crying_ , you bastard," Obito says, but it's halfhearted. "...You're right, Kakashi. Yeah." He regains his composure slowly but surely, and Kakashi lets out a breathe of relief when the wetness vanishes from the Uchiha's eyes.

"We need to write this down," he says. "Before we forget. Shouting out everything is stupid."

Rin nods slightly, and cracks open the thick notebook. "It's new," she says, "and there's some seal on it. It's pretty cheap, so I think any skilled shinobi can get past it with ease, but at least people can't just flip it open. We can attune it to our chakra, so only we can open it. Where should we start?"

"The Kyuubi attack," Obito says resolutely. "That's when - when Sensei and Kushina-nii - when they die," he finishes with difficulty. "It's the same day as Naruto's birthday, October 10th. I don't know what year, but it's twelve years before when these books are set. And - I noticed something weird. The books say the Kyuubi attack is a natural disaster - but that doesn't make sense, because -"

"-because it isn't free in the first place," Kakashi finishes. "It's already sealed in Kushina - she and Sensei told us three months ago. The Kyuubi has been sealed since Uchiha Madara."

"Which means that something else happened," Rin decides. "Something deliberate. Some _one_  deliberately set the Kyuubi on the village, then. If we want to stop the attack, then we need to find out who."

She writes that down -  _'Who is behind the Kyuubi attack?'_  on the top of the page. "That's our first question," she says, and copies the relevant dates.

"The timing is too convenient," Kakashi says, thinking. "The fact that the Kyuubi attacks the same day Naruto is born - there's no way that's a coincidence. Remember what Sensei told us about the reason why Kushina is rarely on active duty, even though she's one of the top jonin in the village?"

"The seal weakens when she's stressed," Rin answers, a light in her eyes. "And - giving birth is one of the most stressful things there is!"

Obito had turned pink, obviously uncomfortable with the subject matter. "But - but that means that whoever attacked the village knows exactly when she would, um, have the baby! That means it has to be someone  _in_ the village, no," he decides, "someone close to both Sensei and Kushina-nii. They wouldn't announce a baby to the whole village, especially when Kushina-nii has the Kyuubi!"

Rin writes it all down dutifully. "I think that's all we got," she says. "What next?"

"Naruto in the Academy," says Kakashi. "The system is obviously different from ours. All the students graduate at 12." Extremely old, considering that he himself had attained the rank at age five, and even  _Obito_  had become a chuunin by 11. "They probably changed the system because the war is over."

Rin smiles at that. "I still can't believe it," she says. "It feels like the war has been going on forever - I don't remember a time when Konoha wasn't fighting. Can you imagine? No more missions to Iwa."

"I hope that comes soon," Obito complains. The last mission outside of the village had ended with Obito being carried back, covered head to toe in small, painful scratches from an especially sadistic opponent - a sadism that had turned into his downfall.

"And we get time to do stuff other than train! Maybe we could even go to civilian villages - I heard that they have these things called movies, and they're like plays that are recorded, like moving pictures." There were stars in Rin's eyes now, and Kakashi knew he had to cut off that train of thought quickly.

"What's important is now," he says abruptly. "We don't know how many years the war keeps going on. There's still the possibility that we won't survive it."

"But you show up in the future!" Obito says.

"We're going to change the future. That means we can change it to be worse, not just for the better. Maybe I don't die in the future, but I die now. I won't magically survive a gut wound because these books say I survive to teach Team 7," Kakashi reasons. He doesn't say that the odds for Rin and Obito's survivals are even lower, because they don't show up. They could have died in the decades long gap between their present and the books' future. "We still need to train. Everything we know in these books don't mean  _shit_  if we die before we get to do anything."

"That's - Dammit. You're right, Kakashi," Obito admits, and Kakashi is tempted to check for flying pigs outside. Rin gives them both a large grin, though he has no idea why.

"We need to be efficient with the time we have," he says. "Sensei told me that I will probably be promoted within the month - the front lines are running out of jonin, and they need everyone they can get. After that, I don't know how much time I will have to stay in the village. Even Sensei only gets to stay because he has a team."

"Then we're on a time limit," Rin says resolutely. "Okay! We need to get all the books we can get our hands on - most likely, we can all find them now. We don't have much time, so we need to read the ones that give us the most information. I got through all of mine, but a lot of information was repeated - there's some extra detail, but it's not worth the extra ten thousand words I read for them."

"Check the summaries first, got it," Obito agrees, and then says in a terrible attempt at motivation, "We can do this, Team Minato! We'll save the village through the power of randomly appearing future books and really weird gay romance novels! Yeah!"

Kakashi says nothing, because there's a feeling pressing down at him as he looks at his team that he is unfamiliar with, but doesn't exactly... dislike. It wasn't annoyance, as he thought he should feel at Obito spouting his usual idiocity,  _again_. No, it was - he flinched. No, it was bad. He couldn't get attached. Getting attached meant losing sight of the mission. Getting attached meant  _him_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "That was stupid," Kakashi says bluntly. "Even more so than usual."

  
_Hyuuga Hinata was a clan heiress.  Since as long as she could remember, she had expectations forced upon her.  She was to uphold the pride of the Hyuuga Clan by not only excelling, but being the very_ best _.  The heiress to the clan was to be proud, possessing a certain innate dignity.  And yet, she must be respectful to the honored ones, like the Clan Elders and the Hokage-sama._

  
_She fell short of each and every one.  Her skill at her clan's jutsu was adequate, but adequacy was not enough.  Her cousin Neji had long surpassed her, and he was only a year older than herself.  She was at the top of her class, but wasn't the Rookie of the Year.  And, worst of all, she lacked the demeanor of a heiress - that, she knew more than anyone._ _She didn't talk, and was painfully shy.  Most of her class didn't know she existed, and the one person Hinata_ wanted _to notice her -_  


_As if on cue, the blond boy turned toward her, beautiful blue eyes - like Mother's sapphires, she had thought once - fixated completely on her.  She couldn't breathe, couldn't look him in the eye, couldn't do anything but shy away slightly._

_"Hey," he said brightly -_

Obito sucks in a breath, bringing the book closer to his face.  It was going to happen - It was going to  _happen_  -

 

_"I've never seen you before," said Naruto quizzically, looking her up and down.  "Y'know, you're really -"_

"Yeah!"

 

_"-weird," he finished, and Hinata cowered further into her seat.  Of course he would say that.  She had spent the past few years sitting at the back of the room, staring at his back -_

"Ugh,  _dammit_!"  Obito throws the book across the room in frustration.  For a second there, he had thought it was actually going to  _happen_.  It was disappointing, seeing the girl Hinata constantly cower away from saying the right words - or, for the matter of fact,  _any_  words.  He wanted to reach right into that stupid book and yell at her to confess already (except, maybe he wasn't the best person for that, considering his own efforts with getting Rin to notice him  _that_  way.)

 

He sags down again, lying on his futon.  The ceiling was a familiar sight.  He had been living here for as long as he could remember, with that same grumpy asshole guy in the room down.  Over the years, he had categorized pretty much every crack om the damn ceiling.  When he was bored, he would even make up names for specific patterns.  'The Devil Cat,' he had chosen for one, after the demonic feline that inhabited the dango stand down the street.  'The Bastard Kakashi's Real Face, Probably,' was the name of a particularly craggy crack.

 

Maybe if Kakashi took off his mask, his secret ugliness would scare every girl away.   _That,_  he thought morosely,  _or it turns out that he's a total bishonen and just wears the mask so people don't jump him on the street._   Fish lips wouldn't fit with how textbook perfect of a shinobi every other part of Kakashi was, or even huge, puffy lips.    


 

Except, maybe Kakashi wasn't so bad after all.  

 

Obito wouldn't admit it even if Rin asked, but one of his greatest dreams (after Hokage, of course!) was to befriend the pushy, proud jerk that was Hatake Kakashi.  Why did he have to make it so hard?  It was as if the guy had the ability to subconsciously sense all his berserk buttons and push every single  _one_.  Kakashi called him a crybaby, and an idiot, and lazy.  And he  _wasn't_.   Those were the last things he wanted to be, had spent his entire life working to  _not_  be - and no matter what Kakashi said, he didn't get promoted to Chuunin at age 11 by being a total loser. 

 

But compared to Kakashi, maybe he was.  Didn't the guy make chuunin when he was six?  Obito sighed.  

 

Still, Obito had expected him to ditch him and Rin - not to help.  But Kakashi had agreed, had even read that weird book that had Sensei's son making out with his Uchiha teammate for like fifty pages.  

 

(And somehow found out from  _that_  that there would be  a  _new_  Hokage, the Godaime, who Kakashi had said was Tsunade.  As in, Tsunade of the  _Sannin_.  No  _way_.  Damn Kakashi - Obito hadn't expected him to actually  _get_  information out of that trashy novel!)

 

He couldn't stop thinking about future Kakashi's Sharingan eye.  An Uchiha best friend?  Obito had been telling the truth - he  _hadn't_  known that Kakashi had friends.  It felt almost as if the guy had no life out of training.  It seemed hard to believe that one day, the cocky bastard would be such good friends with an Uchiha that his clansman would give Kakashi an  _eye_.  The closest thing he had heard to thatš had been  eye transplants within the clan, between close relatives, and even then it was rare.

 

  
_He probably found a Uchiha who was just  as much of a cocky bast are as he was,_ he thinks.  It wouldn't exactly be hard, considering that those made up the majority of the clan.  But it didn't add up, not really.  No Uchiha he knew would give an eye to an outsider, not even if they were best friends and brothers in every other way.  It just didn't happen.

 

But.  What if Kakashi's Uchiha best friend... was Obito?  

 

The very thought made him inexplicably happy.  Obviously, it meant that he was dead in the future, but  _hell_  - he was dead either way, whether it was getting killed in the (oh god oh god) Uchiha Massacre or before giving Kakashi an eye.  But it also meant that, not only would Obito activate his Sharingan in the future, but Kakashi would acknowledge him as a  _friend_.  Not a crybaby or a loser, but as an equal.  And, maybe that was worth giving away one of his Sharingan and incurring the wrath of the entirety of the clan.  

 

Screw them, he thinks rebelliously.  It wasn't as if they ever did anything for him, anyways.

 

"Yo."

 

Obito jerks up.  Kakashi is peering over his window sill, barely tall enough for his eyes to peek in.  "Sensei's back," he says casually.  "Try not to encounter any old grannies crossing the street, okay?"  And then he was gone, as if he had never been there in the first place.

 

He stares for a moment, stunned.  The last time Kakashi had shown up at his place, he had caught Obito at his most embarrassing moment - five seconds away from kissing Rin's picture.  The jerk had sent him a look of complete and utter judgment, and left without saying whatever he had came to say.  He hadn't been back since.

 

Obito pulls on his jacket quickly, and grabs his equipment in such haste that he almost slices his finger open on a spare kunai.  "Shit, that was close!"  He mutters to himself.  Rin would have had a fit, especially when she found out that he had been leaving stray weaponry in his 'pigsty of a room' again.

 

He bounds out of his window in a graceful leap.  Obito was shinobi after all -  even if the window was only about four feet up from the ground...

* * *

 

"Obito will be here soon," Kakashi says as greeting, before tacking on,  "Sensei, it's good to see you back."  

 

Sensei quirks an eyebrow.  "Kakashi, you went to see him?"

 

"I had to make sure he wouldn't be late today, Sensei," he says, not exactly lying.  "How were the front lines?"

 

"As well as they could be, I suppose," the older man says with a sigh.  Kakashi knew that Sensei had never liked fighting on the front-lines, spilling Iwa blood as the dreaded Yellow Flash.  'I much prefer training my cute little students', Minato-sensei had told them once.  

 

Kakashi regarded him carefully.  Neither he nor Rin had checked Obito's hypothesis on the strange amnesiac effect the books had on people who weren't on their team.  "Sensei," he says loudly, "Rin, Obito and I have discovered a source of information on the relatively distant future - approximately twenty years."

 

"I'm sorry, Kakashi, did you say something?"  Sensei asks after a moment, expression confused.  It takes all the self control Kakashi can muster in order to stop himself from groaning in disappointment.

 

"I just wanted to ask," he says, switching tactics, trying to think of something he had learned only from reading the future books.  "...What are your thoughts on the name 'Naruto'?"

 

"...That's a strange question to ask, Kakashi," Sensei says, quizzically.  "But to answer that... If I remember correctly, the main character of one of Jiraya-sensei's books - not the perverted ones!"  He is quick to defend, "his earliest work, in fact.  I was a huge fan, but apparently it wasn't too popular.  The name stuck with me though, even though it has been a few years since I read the book - 'The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi' is the title."  He glances over, slightly suspicious.  "Why did you ask, Kakashi?  Did something happen?"

 

"No," he lies.  "I saw the name when I was reading a book."  Sensei can hear him now, so it is obvious that whatever jutsu had been used hadn't included the future knowledge itself - he simply wouldn't have any proof to back it up with.  "The books are from the future," he blurts, and is not entirely surprised when Minato-sensei declares that the fighting on the front-lines must have messed with his ear drums, and if he could please say it a bit louder?

 

"Nevermind," he says, just as Rin and Obito run up to the field, side by side.  

 

Sensei smiles brightly as they wave at him excitedly, and says, "No black cats today, Obito?"

 

The Uchiha flushes slightly, but obviously relieved.  "Uh, not today, Sensei!  It's good to see you back!"  They had spent most of the week trying to figure out how to stop Sensei from dying - it was to be expected when Obito had worried about what would happen if Sensei - against all odds - never came back from the mission.  

 

"It's good to see you too, Obito, Rin,"  he says as he ruffles Obito's hair.  "Now, I'm sure all of you have been training hard while I was gone.  I was thinking that, to celebrate my coming back, we could go somewhere to eat.  My treat, of course."

Obito cheers, but Kakashi quirks an eyebrow.  "Kushina made you, didn't she."

 

"Of course not!"

 

"It's going to be at Ichiraku Ramen, isn't it."

 

Sensei slumps.  "...Yeah.  It is."  The 'again' is unspoken, but Kakashi knows from years of experience that when it comes to Uzumaki Kushina, it was  _always_  ramen.

* * *

"So," says Kushina, after inhaling another bowl of ramen and a shout of 'Another!  Miso this time!', "What's going on with you kids?"

 

The three of them exchange a look.  "Nothing much," Kakashi says unconvincingly.  

 

"You can't fool me so easily, Kakashi-kun.  Obito-kun hasn't called you a jerk  _once_  since we got here!  What happened, you two kiss and make up?"

 

" _No!_ "  Kakashi and Obito shout simultaneously, scandalized.  Rin shook her head, "It's just a figure of speech, Kakashi, Obito," she says reproachfully.  

 

"That too!"  Kushina laughs.  "But seriously.  You guys haven't even finished a  _single_  bowl of ramen since we got here, and I'm on my fifth!"

 

"We can't all have as big of an appetite as you do, Kushina-chan,"  Sensei assures, smiling.  "The last time  _I_  managed to finish more than a single bowl was when... do you remember when I grew a foot in about three months?"

 

"Of course!  That was when you finally grew taller than me!"  She exclaims.  "...Hey, if I eat another five bowls, do you think I'll get another growth spurt?  Then I can tower over you again, dattebane!"

 

"Please no," Sensei says pathetically.  Kushina-san must be eating him out of house and home, Rin thinks.  Given her truly monstrous appetite, it was a completely plausible possibility.  And yet...  _so romantic!_    It took all she could not to blush - the thought of finding someone as devastatingly handsome as Sensei (just saying!) who was also so kind and understanding... it must be every girl's dream.  

 

She couldn't help but glance over at Kakashi.  It was true - she had been crushing on him since... well, since the first day of the Academy.  He was handsome, which she knew even though he never showed his face - the facial structure  _never_  lied, and those  _cheekbones_... But the main thing was his general demeanor.  Kakashi was cool and mysterious in a way that no other boy she knew was, and it was obvious with the number of fangirls he had that she wasn't the only one who was attracted to that.

 

And yet, when Rin was put on Team Minato with him, it had become clear that he wasn't as perfect as the Academy instructors liked to say.  He was too serious, constantly looking at people with that half-lidded, stoic gaze.  He picked on Obito in a way that made it obvious that he wasn't so above 'puerile distractions,' as he once put it.  In all honesty, Rin felt bad for him.  She didn't know much about Kakashi's home life, other than the fact that he had none.  He hung out too much at Sensei's, so much that she had wondered if he actually lived with Sensei and Kushina-san.  While he was respected, he wasn't exactly liked by his fellow shinobi - at least, not in any non-superficial way.

 

When it got down to it, she would pick Obito over him any day.  Best friends were far more important than random crushes!  It was just a shame that Obito didn't seem to realize that - she figured that was one reason he had such animosity towards the other boy.  It had gotten to the point where she wanted to go up to him, shake him a little, and tell him that just because she thought Kakashi was cute, didn't mean that Obito wasn't her best friend.

 

Honestly.  But Obito would react badly, especially since he had been trying to be subtle (ha!) about it.  So she kept quiet and  _constantly_  hinted, hoping that Obito will figure it out soon.

 

* * *

Obito stares down into his ramen blankly.  The rich broth is congealing before him, flecks of pale white pork fat arising from the tonkotsu broth.  Kushina-nee is talking loudly to his right, but instead of raising his spirits, her voice depresses him.  

 

Obito could admit that he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.  In fact, Kakashi would probably call him a spoon.  He could never calculate the exact trajectory of a shuriken launched straight forward against a northeast wind of five meters per hour, or come up with a brilliant battle plan on the fly, like Kakashi could.  

 

He had always been a different sort of learner, and Sensei's more hands-on training was probably the only reason he made Chuunin.  In the classroom, his mind would go blank even before he finished reading the first sentence of the final exam.  But in the field, it was almost as if he  _knew_  things, as he rushed through each thought with a speed he never thought he could possess.

 

Granted, Ichiraku Ramen wasn't exactly a battlefield.  That didn't stop it from feeling like one, Obito's heart thumping in his chest as he watches Sensei and Kushina-nee laugh and argue and kiss, truly feeling the weight of what he and the rest of his team had discovered just a few days ago.  It had seemed distant when they read about the blond prankster Naruto and the adventures of his team, but it hadn't hit him that Sensei, Kushina-nee were going to... going to  _die_ , if he and Rin and Kakashi didn't succeed.  

 

The pressure was incredible.  He had spent most of his day trying to find out what  _happened_  the day of the Kyuubi attack - and more importantly, how to stop it.  But all there was stuff they already knew, had already read dozens of times!  Obito could recite Team 7's likes and dislikes from memory, and he  _still_  didn't know what had happened to Kushina-nee, Sensei, Rin, and, well, everyone other than Kakashi (but maybe him too, because what had  _happened_  to him?  When did he start reading those perverted books anyways?)

 

What if Kushina-nee dies because he didn't catch the important intel right in front of him?  She might call him a dumb brat and tell Rin and Kakashi to look after him on missions (as if she didn't know that  _he_  should be the one looking after them!), but he didn't know what he would do if she...

 

He swallows past a particularly big lump in his throat, all appetite gone.  

 

"Oi, what's wrong with you, Obito?"  He jolts up to see Kushina's concerned face just a few inches from his own.  "Is there something wrong with your ramen?"

 

"No, nothing wrong," he chuckles, rubbing at the back of his head sheepishly.  "I guess I'm just... not in the room for ramen today."

 

"Not... not in the room for...  _ramen_?"   _Oh shit_ , Obito thinks in dismay, and he knows that he has a made a terrible mistake.  Rule number one of associating with Uzumaki Kushina was... never say anything against ramen.   _Ever_.  "You little -!"  She rages,  "You mean to tell me that after I went out of my way to treat you guys to ramen -"

 

"I thought I was the one paying?"  Sensei asks, lips quirking up.  

 

"-to force your no-good Sensei to treat you guys to ramen," she amends, without the slightest hesitation, "and you don't even eat it?"

 

"Hey!  It's not like I wanted you to treat us to ramen anyways.  And what if I have something more important to do than eat ramen, huh?  Like -"  He thinks quickly, because he's not quite as dumb as to mention books about Kushina-nee's future orphaned son.  "Like training.  I gotta train a lot to be strong, so I can be Hokage, ya know!"

 

"You stupid brat!"  She shouts, eyes practically exploding to flames as she holds a single fist up in anger.  Obito gulps.  "How many times do I have to tell you?  No one can become a Hokage on an empty stomach!"

 

"Kushina-kun,"  Sensei placates, and Obito mentally praises him for saving his life from the monstrous Kushina-nii... again.  "There are other customers eating..."

 

"Not anymore," Kakashi says casually, and gestures toward the empty spot the one other customer had been sitting.  Obito shoots him a look of pure betrayal, only for the asshole to shrug.  

 

"Well - what if it was a matter of life and death?"  Obito shouts, desperately looking for an escape.  "What if I spend time eating ramen or something, and it turned out that I could have used the time to save the life of one of my precious people?"  Kushina-nii gave him an odd look.  He sees Kakashi slam a hand to his face in the distance, Rin desperately waving her hands in the universal 'stop, stop, just stop talking' motion.  Oh crap, maybe he had gone a bit too specific.  "Like... if I trained now, I could learn a cool technique that I could use on a mission!"  

 

Kushina-nee had calmed down a little, her hair no longer floating around her head under the influence of pure and utter fury.  "Even then," she says.  "If you think like that all the time, then you'll never be able to enjoy your life.  Shinobi have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders, but you can't let it crush you!  Your precious people wouldn't want you to work yourself to the bone, or hurt yourself, just for their sake.  Don't waste time with what-if's. No matter how important the thing you're supposed to be doing is, you can't let it take over you, dattebane!"

 

Obito goes silent, whatever he wanted to say dying at his lips.  "Kushina-nee..." 

 

She grins, lowering her fist, and he breathes a sigh of relief.  "Now if you're finally done angsting, finish your damn ramen!"

* * *

 

"That was stupid," Kakashi says bluntly.  "Even more so than usual."

 

"Shut up, Kakashi,"  Obito mutters, but without much anger - he knows that he screwed up.  Finally, he admits, "I'm just frustrated.  We haven't gotten any important information for days!  They're all about Team 7 going on random missions.  Heck, the only one that seemed to get anywhere was that trashy romance novel you got!"

 

For some reason, '100 SasuNaru Kisses' had skipped right past the time frame that every single other book seemed to be stuck in.  It had stuff about Team 7, sure, but it also mentioned a Fifth Hokage.  Incredibly, it had also referenced Orochimaru - the Legendary Sannin Orochimaru! - as a traitor to the village, something about messed up experiments and a creepy obsession with the Sharingan (Obito hoped desperately  _that_  wasn't going right now, for the sake of self-preservation.)  Something called the 'Akatsuki' was mentioned once or twice, in between frantic kissing.  The only mention of Naruto's parents had been... weird, to say the least.  Something about a guy named 'Arashi'?

 

Dammit.  Obito had been really excited at the beginning because he thought it was going to be a lot easier.  He wished he could just open a book titled, 'How to Prevent the Kyuubi Attack' and just be done with it.  Instead, he had to read hundreds of pages about genin doing boring stuff, like train, or find lost cats, or make out.  

 

"That's it," Kakashi says suddenly.  " _That's it._ "

 

"Eh?"  Obito squints, jolted out of his thoughts.  "What's it?"

 

"We've been looking through the wrong things, all this time," Kakashi says flatly.  "When we decided which of these to go over first... we chose wrong.  Those books that we thought were useless - the ones about 'high-school' and 'pop singers' and Maito Gai... theoretically, those will give us the most information."

 

"Oh!" Rin gasps, eyes lighting up.  "That explains why the more serious accounts are moving so slow.  I looked through some of the... 'high-school AU's', and they have bigger numbers for the year they're published - '2009' instead of '2005', like that."  She says the foreign term with some difficulty.  Neither Obito nor Kakashi had known what a 'high-school' was, had balked at the idea of students being taught about useless subjects like 'chemistry' and 'english' - whatever  _that_  was - instead of jutsu.  Only Rin had some familiarity with the idea, remembering some kind of civilian institution that some of her cousins in one of the trading villages attended.

 

"They are published later," Kakashi decides.  "That means that the events of those books... take place further into the future.  "

 

"So we have to actually  _read_  that - that trash?"  Obito demands.  The look he gets says it all.


	3. of a moment's surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin has opinions // Kannabi Bridge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh, I'm pretty stuck on this fic because there's so many different directions I want to take this. I have a bunch of short snippets written out but have no idea how to get to them, or to go from there. I figure I'll just post these here.
> 
> The fic that Obito reads is Shards of the Heart, by Shtuff, which happens to be one of my favorite Kakashi Gaiden fics. Of course, it was written before recent reveals, but it's amazing all the same.
> 
> Snippets divided by double dividers. Again, this is not canon for this fic, just a possibility I've been throwing around.

_Naruto smiled like a fox, his Sharingan swirling into existence in his blue eyes.  He had activated them when he was five, when a bunch of villagers tried to beat him up.  Using those eyes, he had killed all of them and the Hokage had immediately promoted him to ANBU.  "I'm going to kill you" he said as trees grew into existence around him to spear his attackers, the Mokuton he had gotten after Orochimaru experimented on him activating -_

Rin winces as she puts the book to the side.  Another one.  Honestly, it was getting ridiculous.  She reaches over for another, reads until she sees ' _Naruto and his harem of kunoichi'_   before giving up, again.

It was as if the authors of these books had tried to cram every legendary technique of the shinobi world into one person.  Mokuton?  Sharingan?   _Together?_   The only thing that could be less realistic if they had the Rinnegan as well, and she didn't even know if it actually existed outside of fantasy stories.  She shakes her head in frustration.  Not everyone could have amazing kekkei genkai, and it was frustrating that people thought the only way to be good shinobi was to have one.

 

Rin herself had no special abilities passed on to her by her parents, both of whom were career chuunin.  She loved them, that there was no doubt.  But they weren't legendary or famous or even especially heroic, like Sensei, who was all three.  Her genetics had given her an average amount of chakra as well as exemplary chakra control, and so she had gone down the path of medic nin.  She knew that she would probably never reach the level of legends like Tsunade, or be a prodigy like Kakashi, but that didn't really matter to her.  

 

All she wanted was to defend her village and protect her people.  Rin never wanted to stand by while others fought, but she didn't have the massive chakra reserves or raw power to fight head-on - not like Obito or Kakashi.  Instead, she acted as support, patching up her boys when they got in over their heads.  She would help her best friend achieve his dream of being Hokage, no matter how impossible everyone else thought it was.  


 

Rin sighs, and reaches for the last book by her side.  

* * *

* * *

It's dark by the time Obito starts walking home.  Autumn had brought hues of red and orange to the village, but the setting of the sun now renders them colorless.  Still, he can feel the distinct chill of the season on the winds that blow sporadically, and he is glad that his goggles block the bits of dead leaves and bark that the breeze carries in its wake.  He shivers; the wind blows past his jacket with ease.

 

He can't help but admire the stars in the skies as he walks.  Konoha always had clear skies, and while he had never gotten the chance to spent much time in other villages, he knows at least that this is utterly unlike the smoke filled battlefields near the Iwa border.  The moon too shines down at him, a light that just barely illuminates his way and does nothing to stop him tripping over what is probably a large rock in the middle of the path.

 

Except, he finds as he pushes himself back up, it's not a rock.  His heart sinks as his fingers touch on the cover of what is unmistakably a book.  He had hoped to leave behind the whole thing with random appearing, books about the future until tomorrow - he didn't even want to  _think_  about them.  But the other books had appeared on shelves and tables, stands and chairs... he had always been forced to go out of his way to get a hold of them.  

 

This one, however... it was almost as if it wanted him to find it.

 

He hesitates for only a moment, but picks it up.  The title wasn't visible at all, obscured by the darkness of the evening.  Obito hefts it back home.  

 

It had been a long day.  Obito makes a beeline toward his shower, hoping that the water wouldn't be  _completely_ freezing.  He's wrong, of course - this late at night, no one bothered to heat the water.  He chatters his teeth through a brief downpour, pulls on a set of wrinkled nightclothes that he really can't remember washing, and stares down at his new acquisition balefully.

 

He sighs, ignoring the title - Obito had long realized that they were over-dramatic and useless, for the most part - and flips open to an arbitrary page. 

 

Obito freezes.  

  
_"You're welcome," said Obito, taking Kakashi's hand.  "I guess miracles do exist, since we all got through alive."_ The page begins, and his hands tremble as the implications set in.  It was him.  It was  _him_ , and  _Kakashi_ , and in the very next sentence there was Rin, and holy crap. _It was them_.  The book feels a lot heavier in his hands now, because he is holding not just a distant future that - if he had to admit - still couldn't completely believe existed.  It was one thing to read about the next generation of Konoha shinobi, and a completely different one to see one's own, immediate future.

 

He knows that he should probably close the book and tell Rin and Kakashi tomorrow, so they can all decide on what to do.  They had talked about the possibility before, and that  _was_  what they had agreed on... and yet, Obito's fingers twitch as he glances over at the book again.  It wouldn't matter if he just took a peek, right?  He could just pretend that he had no idea what would happen.  And anyways, that would give him an advantage over freaking  _Kakashi_.  

 

(Obito had never had great self-control.)

 

He quickly deduces that their team is on a mission - probably somewhere in Iwa, judging by the rocks everywhere, but in wartime, were there any missions that weren't in Iwa?  That means it was going to happen relatively soon, then.  Obito holds his breathe as his team navigates their way through the cave, and then -

 

_Sharingan?_

He stares incredulously at the sentence.   _With the speed of the Sharingan, Obito was able to take him down with relative ease._   

 

A slow, shocked smile made its way onto his face.  He had the Sharingan.  He had the  _Sharingan_ , and he - future Obito, whatever - had just used it to kick  _ass_.   _He had done it._  He could already imagine it happening - that awesome, exciting moment when his eyes swirled into the Sharingan and he could finally see - well, chakra, probably.  And then Rin would turn to him, stars in her eyes, and Kakashi would 'hmph' but look vaguely jealous, and all of his clansmen could eat their words about him being useless.  

 

Obito's wide grin lasts for about the two paragraphs it takes for three dozen Iwa nin to flood the clearing.  Future Kakashi shouts an order, only for all three of them to get completely overrun.  His mouth is slack open as Team Minato is taken captive, forced into line with the rest of the prisoners, taken to the - to the Iwa interrogation headquarters.  The  _torture_  headquarters.

 

He notices distantly that his nails had formed small crescent shapes on the front and covers of the book.  It couldn't be happening.  It couldn't - it wouldn't -  He was going to be  _Hokage_!  And Kakashi - he wouldn't have been captured so easily, he would have brought out some amazing technique that only he knew, and wiped the floor with those Iwa nin.  Rin  _couldn't_  have been captured, she had those chakra scalpels of hers, she would have curbstomped them in - in minutes!  Future Obito had the Sharingan, that was supposed to make him strong, and how could he have the Sharingan and  _still_  can't protect -

 

Obito registers the fact that he was still on the first few pages of the book.  A single burst of hope comes into existence within him, and he flips through the pages desperately.

 

It's Sensei, and he's alone - no, talking to someone named Kia in a  _very_  familiar manner (Kushina-nee would have his balls, Obito thinks.)  Obito notes dimly as he kills a few Iwa nin and forces his way through a heavy door, only to see -

 

-  _three familiar bodies_ _dark spiky hair_ _purple stripes cutting across both cheeks silver hair turned gray with blood and dirt -_  


Obito shuts the book quietly, trembling.  He lays down.  He doesn't know when he had started to cry, but the wetness down his cheeks could be nothing else.  Horror fills every part of his being, and the only thing that forces him to pick the book back up and  _keep reading_  was because Kakashi had been alive in the future, if no one else - at least  _he_  didn't die here.

 

Relieved, he finds that Future Kakashi does survive.  So does Future Obito and Rin, to his great surprise.  But it is clear that it had been a narrow thing, and Future Kakashi is marked with obvious permanent scars and -

 

-  _his eyes_  .  Kakashi was going to be a great shinobi, Obito knew, even if he hadn't been pleased with the notion most of the time.  He wasn't supposed to be  _blind_.  The very thought was anathema to Obito, as it was to any member of a clan that so valued their eyes.  

 

Obito speeds through the rest of the book, taking in every word.  He sees Future Obito change and mature and  _grow up_ , even if he never quite gets the eternal love of his clan, or becomes Hokage.  What happened in the end... he guesses that it wasn't as bad as what could have happened.  The three survive the book, he and Kakashi and Rin, despite a lot of close calls.  They're happy, for what it counts.  

 

But.  Kakashi shouldn't have to be blind.  They shouldn't have to be - have to be  _tortured_  in order to be a team, dammit!  Obito picks up the book, takes it out of his house.  He Katons it, and watches it burn, noting distantly that future paper burned just like regular paper.

 

Kakashi and Rin couldn't know.  It wouldn't matter much if they  _did_ know, he justifies to himself. This... there was no guarantee that this would happen.  In all the stuff about Team 7, Kakashi still had both eyes, even if one of them was not his own.  It just meant that what he had seen... was a possibility. 

 

A possibility that would never happen.  Obito would make sure of it. 

 

He wouldn't make the same mistakes Future Obito made, wouldn't let Kakashi - that bastard, that utter  _bastard_  - sacrifice himself again and again, wouldn't let Rin, the best person he knew, get captured and hurt.  No matter what happens - even if he had to give his  _life_  - Obito wouldn't let it happen.  

 

* * *

Obito looks at his surroundings, the cave, the rocks, the approaching Iwa nin... and realizes that he is in hell.  This is where their Team is destined to be captured, to be tortured, to be broken.  A chill runs through his body as he realizes that... this is it.  Everything that had happened, everything that he had done in the past month... was for this.

 

He is going to save his team, no matter what.

 

Rin and Kakashi were safe (for now, his mind says rebelliously), and even though one of Kakashi's eyes is blinded (protecting  _him_ , damndamndamn), he's just as much of a bastard as he was usually.  That was good, he thinks, because the Future Kakashi he had seen had been - had none of that casual arrogance, that easy self-confidence, all stripped away at the hands of Iwa interrogators.  And it had  _hurt_ , seeing Kakashi like that.  

 

The Sharingan spun in his eyes, but there is nothing of that wild exuberance and joy that he had always thought would come with them.  All there is now is the mission.   _His_  mission.  Kakashi and Rin were going to walk out of this damn cave, no matter what.  

 

Rocks start to fall, each thudding to the ground in a spray of gravel.  They're pretty easy to dodge, and he makes it through with relative ease.  He needs to save his chakra for the enemy shinobi outside - there were at least a dozen of them, and even if they can't  _win_ , maybe they can hold out long enough for Sensei to get to them - 

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Kakashi stagger and fall.  His blind spot, Obito thinks distantly, he's blind in one eye, he can't  _see_  on that side, he  _knew_  he forgot something, stupid stupid  _stupid -_  


He hears the whistle of a falling rock, sees the shadow narrowing in on Kakashi, and he knows what he has to do.  There's no time for hesitation, no time to do anything but grab, and heave Kakashi forward, out of the way, and in the split second before time starts moving in real time again, he thinks,  _sorry._  


After that, there's nothing but pain.

* * *


End file.
